Dr Paul Allen

Foster Bible Pictures 0060-1 Moses Sees a Fire Burning in a Bush (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In Exodus 24:9-11 we read:  Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu , and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel . Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. 11 But God did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank. Question: Moses and others saw God with their own eyes? But later, Moses was not allowed to see God's face. Exodus 33:18-23. If Moses already saw the face of God , then who's face was he not allowed to see? Answer: In the first use God is said to speak to Moses 'face to face' that is not from some distant position as in a dream, or vision but speaking audibly to him while under some visible form. In other words, God spoke to Moses like a person does who is having a conversation. God spoke out of a burning bush, out of a pillar of cloud, e...

English: The Sin of Nadab and Abihu, as in Leviticus 10, illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) It is very important that we take time to prepare our hearts to worship God before we set foot in the building on Sunday.  God made this clear amid the awesome circumstances of the giving of the law in Exodus 19. God called the people to prepare to come into His presence, or near His presence, but not actually onto the mountain where He would speak to Moses . "Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people'" (Ex. 19:10–11). God wanted the people of Israel , before they came near to Him, to get ready to come near to Him, to prepare themselves for an encounter with Him. God gave Israel two d...

English: Moses striking the rock (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Has anyone ever seen God ? This is a question that arises naturally when reading through Scripture. You’re making your way through Exodus and then you read in 24:9-10, Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu , and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, 10 and they saw the God of Israel . There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And then just a few chapters later, you read God’s response to Moses’ request to see his glory: And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘TheLORD’ … 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” (Exodus 33:19-20) In the first passage, Scripture says that Moses saw God, but in the second, God tells Moses that he cannot see his face, because no one can see him and live. How do we make sense of these two statements? Did Moses and the other elders really...

Image via Wikipedia The Regulative Principle of Worship is simple enough. It affirms that Christians ought only to incorporate into their worship those things that God has expressly commanded. The locus classicus for this perspective is Leviticus 10, where Nadab and Abihu , the sons of Levi are struck dead by God for offering “strange fire” before the Lord. The principle is both historical and sound. Its application, however, has often proved to be problematic. The Bible does indeed give a detailed explanation on exactly how God demands to be worshipped. The challenge is that this explanation is given in the Old Testament , prior to the coming of Christ. The Bible tells us what sacrifices should be brought, how they should be killed, how they should be cut up, how they should be cooked, and who should eat what. In the New Testament all we have are scattered mentions of what the saints actually did when they gathered together. Because we rightly affirm that Jesus was the once for all...

Image via Wikipedia LEVITICUS 10:1–11 “ Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the LORD has said, Among those who are near me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified’ ” (v. 3a). The holiness of God is one of the divine attributes most emphasized in Scripture. Moreover, few stories show more clearly how the Lord’s holiness is non-negotiable than the account of what happened to Nadab and Abihu when they offered “unauthorized fire” in the burning of incense (Lev. 10:1–11). In recounting this story, Moses never tells us why the fire was unauthorized, and commentators’ attempts fill in this blank are numerous. It may be that they offered the incense at the wrong time, with the wrong coals, or it may be that they burned another kind of incense than that described in Exodus 30:34–38. Yet whether any of these reasons or others prompted God to judge Nadab and Abihu, the important thing to note is that it was basic disobedience to one of the Lord’s statutes that...